Anthropomorphic characters are commonly rendered in various media, including film animation, computer animation and animatronics. These characters are typically electro-mechanical character figures that gesture, but are generally not intelligent in their controls. For instance, known anthropomorphic character are capable of exhibiting facial expressions, such as blinking eyes and moving mouth parts, but are not particularly responsive or intelligent.
An important quality of the human interaction with an anthropomorphic character is the responsiveness of the anthropomorphic character itself. Responsiveness refers to the anthropomorphic character's ability to, for example, make eye contact with a human or respond with appropriate facial and body gestures, depending on the context of the interaction. Appropriate responsiveness is important for improving the emotional response of the humans that interact with the character. For instance, when we view animated characters in feature films or animations, we see characters responding to one another and we sympathize with those characters. Of course, sympathizing with the character increases the viewer's emotional investment in the feature, thereby providing a more memorable viewing experience.
Animated anthropomorphic character toys or figures, such as those deployed in theme parks or themed restaurants, do not exhibit a desired level of intelligence, particularly when these characters are engaged by a human being. Instead, these characters are generally not capable of sensing human presence, and when they do, they are unable to sense human presence with the nuance to be able to make eye contact. Further, these characters are unable to sense or recognize faces or facial expressions, are unable to identify an individual, and are unable to synthesize speech or other human responses in a useful way. In the event a character is able to detect human presence, it is unable to respond in an intelligent manner insomuch as it cannot provide the impression of life that a person would recognize and find meaningful.
As can be easily envisioned, there are substantial computational requirements for providing a sufficiently interactive animated figure. For example, the effective recognition of objects, people, faces and expressions, accurate perception of the environment, generation of convincing speech, and processing of decisions in a conversational model, including natural language processing, are all computationally-intensive processes. The limitations associated with currently available animated characters primarily arise from the computational limitations of those characters. For instance, the micro controllers for consumer-type animated characters are relatively small and therefore incapable of satisfying the computational requirements of perceptual processing, decision processing, and animated output processing as discussed above.